From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children, this is Dive In. I am your host, Federico Weitholer, professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to the seventh episode of the third season of Dive in. Today we will discuss one of the most controversial
issues in special education. When one think of inequities in special education, one of the first terms that come to mind is disproportionality, that is the under or over representation of racial and linguistic minority students in special education services. Today we will delve into this rabbit hole. What is it? What does idea after 50 years require to states to do about it? And what are the states doing about it? And more importantly, what can state and school administrations can
do to address it? And to delve into this complex issue, I invited Katherine Bulgaris. She's an assistant professor at Hunter College. She investigates the factors contributing to racial disparities in special education through a systems lens, focusing on policy compliance. She is the author of the upcoming book Beyond Compliance Reclaiming Agency in Special Education by Harvard Education Press. I will put a link on the description of the show so
you can access the book if you are interested. Okay, here's the disclaimer. There has been a standing and heated debate over whether racial minorities are over or underrepresented in special education. This is a sensitive and hot topic. Believe me, I've been in academic conferences and it gets pretty heated when it gets to debate this issue of the representation about these issues. We won't get into these controversies whether racial
minorities are over underrepresented in this show. We'll do it later in another show that we will focus entirely on that particular question. This episode will focus more on state responses, meaning how the policy aspects of disproportionate representation plays out in practice, how states respond to this legal framework.
This is a critical issue considering the recent moves of the current administration to relocate the Office of Special Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, which may weaken efforts to keep states accountable for addressing this proportional representation. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Hello Katherine. Thank you for being with us today. It's been a pleasure. I know you've been doing a lot of work and examining this proportionality
at the national level. So want to have you here to ask you some questions how that looks like particularly I think, how states responds to this issue. So I wanted to welcome you and I'm going to start just right up with the first question so we have a common understanding. We what is disproportionate education. I know people sometimes get confused because you can talk about lre, like how disproportional plays in different educational environments could be disciplinary measures,
could be identification. So help us to understand. Welcome. Again, help us to understand what is disproportionality in a special education. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be able to share about the projects I've been working on and my body of work and the way that I've kind of always thought about disproportionality is very much tied to
the regulatory landscape around idea. But I would say that generally disproportionality is really something that isn't symptomatic of a single school, a single district, a single state. It's a nationwide problem, and it really is a systemic problem that is embedded within the entire educational ecosystem. And it's been tracked since we first had large scale studies that could measure disparities in education.
So Lloyd Dunn in 1968 was one of the first kind of scholars to point out there's an inequ across special education, in particular around black students. And the historically rooted nature of this inequity has persisted over time and has just manifested and kind of morphed into different categories. It depends on, you know, around intellectual disability, there could be disproportionality. Around emotional behavior disorders. There's lots of different areas where
racial and disability inequities can manifest. But in the most basic sense, it's really this over or under representation of a particular group in a specific disability category setting or in a disciplinary outcome. And it's really
looking at the intersection of race and disability. For my work within the regulatory landscape around the Individuals with Disabilities Education act or idea, and one of the things that I just want to highlight now is I think that disproportionality is incredibly important to think about in this time and space because we are celebrating Idea at 50, a landmark legislation which has
really shifted the landscape. But as we look at outcomes for all students, we continue to see persistent disparities, and particularly around racial and disability inequities, linguistic and disability inequities. And so we really need to think about what is it about idea, what is it about the regulatory landscape, the monitoring that has not been able to address the systemic inequity that has persisted for decades. So let's see if we can make a quick scenario.
It could be under and over, meaning there will be more proportions that there needs to be a certain kinds of students in special education. Or certain proportion experience in disciplinary missions that are higher than what we expected and maybe also higher proportion of students in more segregated educational environments that we would expect according to some larger education parameters. Is that that kind of. Yeah, and it's, you know, disproportionality. It's always kind of been,
it's hard to measure. But what's typically. And we'll, you know, we'll get into this when we talk about the monitoring landscape, but it's really, you have this kind of set standard in policy and that can always be a debatable standard. But it's thinking about like what's the risk of a child, a student of being classified, placed in special education or disciplined.
And what we see is that that risk can be much higher for particular groups over others, especially black and native students in the United States. And then, you know, there's underrepresentation, things like gifted and talented programs. We don't see oftentimes proportion or parity or equity within whose actually has access to high quality educational environments. And so just that's where disproportionality kind of sits in this over and under space of access to or lack of access to
educational opportunity. And that takes me kind of our next question is like, why does it matter? I mean there are more than less. I mean there may be some more kids with certain disabilities in some areas right. In the state of Louisiana. So why does it matter? I think it matters. Again, going back to that idea at 50, when IDA was passed, and it completely, as I said before, it changed the landscape of schooling in the United States.
And you would hope in the essence of the legislation, which is civil rights based, that every child has access to high quality educational services and supports. But like I said prior to even the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children act, which later became Ida Lloyd Dunn in 1968, noticed that there were racial disparities in special education. So we had this law, we had this legislation come about and these disparities have never
gone away. And one of the reasons why it's impactful is because when you think of long term outcomes for students with disabilities, if they're not getting high quality services, it can impact their graduation rates, it can impact the quality or access to jobs in the labor market.
Higher education, there's a whole host of things that if you are within classroom settings or if you are pushed out of school through disciplinary measures, that you're not going to get the same access and opportunity as others. And again, this has typically been racialized and you'll see disparities in categories like autism, starts to have one type of students, racial group over another, emotional behavior disorders, learning disabilities,
you'll see these disparities. And so it really matters when you think about the long term outcomes and the connections to those outcomes with the specific label that you are given within a school setting. And yeah, because if you are underrepresented, what I understand is that you may not get the services you need if you're over. If you may
be in a special education, I should be there. You should be. You maybe you are going to an educational setting or having some educational experiences that may, you didn't need to, you just needed to have good quality
early opportunities to learn, right? Yeah. And I think like this is really where my work has been focused from the get go, is really understanding why there's this disjuncture between the, the promise of equal educational opportunity through IDEA and then historic inequities in special education and really seeing how firsthand how policy and IDEA in particular, and how educational systems can both support and marginalize students at the intersection of race and disability.
And so I've been exploring this for decades, really or a decade plus, just really thinking about this core question of does compliance matter with IDEA in the pursuit of equity? Because we have so many educators, so many parents, so many caregivers engaging with the special education system, trying to give the best educational opportunity to students or their children, yet something keeps on running awry in terms of why we can't get the outcomes that we need
and equity for all students. So I think it's very important to think about the regulatory and monitoring landscape in particular, because, you know, since disproportionality is so complex and it's related to so many, you know, interrelated factors of lack of educational opportunity, teacher and student relationships, you could have leadership attrition within schools. There's, there's so many systemic factors that contribute to
it that we really need to think about. Like what's the theory of change that's behind the regulatory environment or behind monitoring around this because it has not been able to mitigate or get, you know, address the inequity that has been around for decades. You know, that brings me, I think, to my other question because my understanding is like Protestants, nclb, right. States have been required to report significant disproportionality.
And then if they do find themselves, right, it's kind of a funny thing because they need to find themselves having significant disproportionality. And I think you may Talk about this, but we know that in the early years, maybe continues, you're going to tell us today, but states have huge high, or what is it called, benchmarks to be significantly disproportionate. But if they did, they needed to come up with a plan to address it. Right. So I know you've been researching
this topic. Can you tell us a little bit, has that changed and how are districts now trying to address disproportionality? Have that change over time?
What have you seen? Great question. So I think that from the inception of the EAH ea, since the inception of the regulatory framework around special education, there's always kind of been this moral and ethical impetus to say, are students with disabilities receiving what they should be receiving in the least restrictive environment, free and appropriate public education? But coupled with that, you have this really technical element where as we're mentioning, how do we capture inequity?
Right. And so there's these tensions between this moral, ethical and technical component. And when IDA was first passed, it was really compliance based around watching and understanding our states and districts doing what they need to do. And this did not work. It did not change outcomes for students with disabilities. So come the 1990s into the 2000s, the Office of Special Education Programs, or OSEP, really started to think about continuous improvement monitoring.
And it started to give us the framework that we're working within now, which is the state performance plan, annual Performance Report indicators, where there's this balance of trying to think about how do we comply with ida while also thinking about results based accountability. And so there's this Results Driven Accountability, or RDA framework that OSEP currently has been operating on that links
compliance, IDA compliance with student outreach outcomes. But the issue is when you are within the United States, you have educational federalism where the federal government can only tell states to do so much. And then this is where it's really tricky when you're regulating or thinking about monitoring. Something like disproportionality is that states can determine, as I mentioned earlier, like what is the threshold through which an acceptable amount of equity or inequity
is present. And so there are some states that can set very high metrics where you're not going to get a lot of districts that are going to be identified as having significant disproportionality. And then there's other states that will set a much lower threshold and then have more intensive processes coming in. And so since 2013, there was a US Government Accountability Office USGAO report that noted that there's These high disparities across the country because of the
capacity for states. Right. Because that's what's built into our educational system. States can decide how they do certain things. There's incredible variation in how many districts are identified as having racial and disability disparities. And then coupled with that, you will find no reporting along the indicators that measure racial disproportionality of non compliance with idea. So it goes back to that core question again of how can we be complying with or using the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act? That's civil rights intent. Right. Based out of the momentum from Brown vs Board of Education. All these good intentions in policy and practice, how can we comply with that? Yet we can have these metrics and these disparities that persist
over time. And so I think that this is really where the monitoring system has to be examined for its equity impacts at a much, you know, not just within one state, not one district, but really across the entire United States because something isn't working. But I've never worked with practitioners that say we don't want to be monitored. It's just saying the way that the monitoring system is set up now could use some tinkering and some changes.
And I think one other thing I just want to add on there is, there has been tinkering and changes over the years. As I mentioned, we moved from compliance to accountability. But what's happened is there's been this layering of different regulations over time or different little pieces that make the SPP APR and significant disproportionality
monitoring very cumbersome for practitioners. It is very hard to understand because there are so many different pieces from mathematical calculations of that acceptable or unacceptable inequity and then along with the translation of that then to districts and then making sure that they are, you know, complying with idea and creating monitoring plans. And there's, there's a lot to contend with that can be, can be tricky, tricky to navigate,
Leave it at that. So how the states have been addressing the issue, I mean you're telling a little bit about issues about reporting, but what do we know about what states do when they found disproportionality? Again, so this is where I think the project that I'm currently working on with a team of folks that I've known since graduate school, we've all been asking questions
around disproportionality in different ways. We've come together to build this really large scale multi state study where that's exactly what we're trying to understand because there is very, very little empirical evidence that is informing this theory of change around monitoring
and addressing disproportionality. And how are states doing it? You know, some of the preliminary findings that we're coming together with is, you know, with the discretion that states have, as I just mentioned, and has been documented for decades, is the problem's not being solved. People understand, and states
understand the importance of monitoring. But depending on how much infrastructure bureaucratic layers that they have to address disproportionality, it can become something that is a multi stepped improvement process. Or it could be something where you have two individuals that are tasked to do this across an entire state and they're trying to figure out what to do. And so the variation really has a lot of impact on,
you know, how things are addressed. And I've seen in states where there's been infrastructure built over a decade plus that there's really clear ways to begin to address this. Looking for root causes, contributing factors, making sure you're tying interventions to what we know about disproportionality, make change. And then in other contexts you can see people working to just try to understand that regulatory framework.
And I have a lot of interviews with state level personnel who kind of articulate this kind of, you know, this. The complex space where they have to move federal policy from the state level to the district level can be one that feels very, very difficult because they're translating something that people are not always proud of, the fact that there are racial and disability inequities. And then they're tasked with saying this is how you have to fix it.
When again, there's not a lot of empirical evidence that says these are best practices at a large scale of how to address this problem. And this is where we, you know, our study right now is really trying to lean in and think about what is it that we could find that are impactful levers for change at scale. Where do I see convergence and divergence between federal mandates, state actions and local interpretation of idea? And then how do we feed that back into potentially improving the
monitoring system? Well, I imagine that's, that's kind of very difficult right now because I know authors, you know, there's been like we have the last episode of Diving with Gwen Tavlin talking about most People has been 95 has been fired and these are the people that supposed to follow up with
states, is that right? That's correct. And I think, you know, this is where I can kind of pull out of just disproportionality in general and Just, you know, there are very, there's many levers for improvement in schools. The regulatory levers that have typically been used for change are going to come from parents and advocacy. So that's the ground up. And then you're going to have this kind of systems level state
performance plan, annual performance report levers. So you have this kind of individualized advocacy and you have this system level, top down approach. I would argue what I've seen in my work over time is those two do not meet in a way that can really shift systems in
a unified way. And so one of the things that I think I've grappled with through my work and what we see in this large scale project we have now is knowing the imperfections of the system that is, and again, state personnel, people in districts, nobody says we should get rid of the monitoring system, but there's
spaces where we could improve it. And so I think that there's a lot of opportunity to rethink the way that we are asking districts to monitor outcomes for students with disability, whether it's with disproportionality or graduation outcomes, whatever it may be. But we do need the infrastructure to do this. And if we don't do that, then the only kind of change mechanisms again that research has shown and time has shown is gonna be putting it on the
individual level when we do have the systemic function. And there is entire kind of ecosystem that I've seen layered from the federal to the state to the district level that works on a yearly basis that churns out these reports that are going to at least tell us at minimum that there is a racial and disability
inequity. And one thing I want to add to is like again, in states where they have not necessarily built the infrastructure to do this work around disproportionality, the fact that there is a federal directive to look at racial and disability inequities is a powerful tool. When you walk into districts and you're saying that there's a numerical inequity, this isn't the state saying you have to do this. This is coming from the federal level. So we need to monitor this and address it.
And then there's a whole host of other issues that come with monitoring where states and districts have multiple plans that aren't always coordinated or aren't always working in a cohesive manner. There's lots of room for improvement there. But monitoring is really an important function that has again, room for improvement, but one that we need in order to understand at the aggregate what is going on in relationship to special education outcomes for students
with disabilities. And there was a point, I remember it was last year, a couple of years ago, there were discussions about stopping, requiring states to report this proportionality. Did that happen? The conversation is still going on, yeah. It's tricky because there's so much built into the statute, into idea, and as
I mentioned, there's been these layers and pieces of changes. So you have the 2016 equity and idea regulation, which really asked practitioners to go a little bit further and in addressing significant disproportionality and think about what are the contributing factors which would lead to a root cause analysis? Or districts, you know, thinking like, what is it that's
actually happening that's contributing to this inequity? And in the work that we've done, especially for this large scale project is, you know, the qualitative work in particular, very basic questions about the monitoring system with people at the state and the local level, and what has come out across every level of the educational ecosystem that we've engaged with thus far is that the language around contributing factors is one of the places where people feel some power or agency
as a practitioner engaging with policy, because it gives a chance to ask a little bit further, how do we do this work instead of just saying comply with IDEA and reduce this. So that's been an important thing and that's kind of where the room for improvement and really thinking about the levers of change that work or don't work are going to be incredibly important moving forward as
we think about the infrastructure that's there or not for monitoring. And then what could we do to improve what already exists? So a little bit, you got your feet wet. A little bit about your project. Can you tell us a little bit? Just describe it briefly about what it's about, what's the scope of it and what was kind of your main findings? Absolutely. So I think our big goal is really, again with my team and I, it's a continuation and an expansion of work we've
been orbiting around for over a decade. And it's a study of monitoring as a mechanism for systemic change. And it's really a systems focused project and it's tying together empirical longitudinal data across four states with the lived experiences of people working within the system and experience in it. So from the federal to the local level, you know, we have state leaders, district leaders, building leaders, teachers, caregivers and
students. We're all, we're asking them all the similar questions of what does it feel like to engage with idea in particular in relation to this, this monitoring framework. And then we're, we're coupling that with the states that we're working with, provided us with over 12 years of longitudinal data which we have linked to the SPP APRs and where we can really think about what are those contextual factors over time that contribute to disproportionality?
Because we find that districts are cited, they surpass that state threshold over time in and out. And city districts are always perpetually what we found in our research. They're perpetually under some kind of monitoring for disproportionality. Suburban and rural districts actually have a really high preponderance
of citations for racial disproportionality. And we're going into districts around these different locales to really understand again, why, and then pairing that with thinking about, okay, so how are district leaders, how are building leaders? How are teachers, caregivers, and students all experiencing
this? So then, you know, the big goal of the project is to provide empirically informed data around the regulatory and monitoring landscape to improve it, because we know that it layers onto a complex system of education in the US we know it layers onto complex districts and contexts. But what can we do to shift it or find those levers, again, with empirical data to improve what has been documented now for a long time to allow inequities to persist with evidence of
adherence to ida? Yeah, that seems like a very large project and very overwhelming. I just, just hearing you, I was like, I'm stressing it out, just managing all those different layers of data sources, of working with practitioners, policymakers, you know, administrators, more at the federal level with policy. That seems very impressive. I imagine you have a large team and funding
from somewhere. You know, the team is one that, like I've said before, we've been thinking about this from graduate school onward, about disproportionality in many different ways. And so as you come together as a team, as a collaborative effort, there's ways to ask questions and engage with the
complexity of this project. And one of the first things that we had to do was really think about, and, you know, when I think of advice for researchers and stuff like that is we really had to start with a very strong theoretical and conceptual framing for the work, because getting information from so many different sources and trying to understand how a system works or doesn't work and how it benefits some over others requires a pretty tight container
to empirically investigate such a complex issue. And so, you know, I think that there's something about having the time and Space and funding to do so. And then also really not losing sight of the fact that this is systems level inquiry. Because my work in the past has been much more focused on like district level. And so how do we expand outward to think of from the macro, from the federal down to the micro and the micro back up to the, to the macro
to make sense again of what works and what doesn't work. And you know, we've got four years where we are going to, you know, continue to do this work and, and really try to share as many emerging findings as we can. Yeah, so. And you're funding, you know, hasn't been cut. You know, there's been a lot of cut to DI kind of funding. This seems like has a DI flavor. You know, you're looking at racial disproportionality, but so far you've been on
safe grounds. So our study is really focused on the monitoring and the regulatory framework with disproportionality indicators as the, the mechanisms to really understand what works and what doesn't. And so we've had, you know, one of the things that we are really doing with our work is placing it within again, the context, the broader context of what. How can we better improve the monitoring structure that currently is, you know, put on all 50
states in the territories in the United States to, to improve. So I think that having a systems level lens that is focused on ida, which is really aligned with the type of funding that is, you know, the type of funding that does the work to evaluate the effectiveness of IDEA and to evaluate the impact of IDEA and special education outcomes, we. Our work is really situated in that space. Well, and tell us what you have found so far. I mean, the exciting
part. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're, we're in the beginning stages of the project and so the, everything is kind of emerging and coming out. But one of the things that I've kind of talked about through just setting and laying out the land of this work is that that interplay between federal authority and state autonomy is, you know, is a very important factor on how this issue is addressed or not. There's really tight coupling in the policy landscape between what the federal
level says and the state says. But then it really unravels at the district level and the nuances of policy start to lose meaning from the technicalities of it. And that's where you see a lot of that kind of moral and ethical engagement with idea become a little bit, there's more space within there. The other thing that we've really found is that there's, there's obviously
room for improvement. And the regulatory landscape is really needlessly complex in a way where practitioners are again, really trying to think about how do we do this work without spinning wheels that have already been spun? How can we learn from others? And so one of the things that has really started to pop out is the need for technical
assistance work. And the fact that technical assistance work from the federal and at the state level is one way, kind of a bridge that helps make sure that a policy that's layered across multiple systems is enacted with fidelity and also can push towards the outcomes that we are hoping to see.
And then, you know, one of the last things is that because we're combining, you know, quantitative, qualitative data and thinking about these different pieces is that the technical salience of IDA and the monitoring structure is very strong. But there is this, this need to humanize policy enactments in ways that, you know, are understood at every level
of the system. So, for example, one of the participants that I interviewed kind of likened how this determination of a threshold for disproportionality at the state level is kind of like, they likened it to something like cancer. And they're saying, if you knew you were living in a state, a district or a space or a regional space where there was three times more likely to have cancer or a certain kind of outcome, we should be doing something different about that than just tracking that and
saying it. And I think that it's that human, the humanizing of policy that becomes really important because there's a lot of time and attention put on statistics, the methodology around understanding disproportionality, but the actual impact on students. And I have another state level person that I interviewed who really talked about how that methodology doesn't always capture, because you have to have a minimum cell size and, you know, there's all
these pieces to. It doesn't actually capture the impact, sufficient impact on students. And one of the quotes that they, you know, and I'm summarizing this is saying, you can't. They were saying, you can't tell me that the 1, 2, 3 or 4 students in that district that are experiencing disproportionality that it doesn't matter just because the ratio or the methodology didn't capture
it. So it's really, again, thinking about how do we understand the layers of how the policy trickles down and then how do we make sure that its intent is actually doing what it needs to do to assure that students and caregivers and Teachers and everybody feels sense of agency and can address inequities that are persistent. What, what of the. All these findings that struck you the most? What. What surprised you the most of all? This? This is like, huh, I didn't
think that's going to happen. I'll tell you the thing that struck me the most was the. The recognition of the limitations from the top down of this current structure, but the fact that we are all operating within this monitoring structure because it's what we have. And so there's always a delicate balance of we need something to help us understand a problem, disability and racial inequities.
We need a policy there. But the life that it's taken on its own as a monitoring system and the detachment from its actual intent and impact, even though so much time and energy is put into this every year across
the system, I think that that's been very stark. And what's very important to me and to our team in doing this work is again, really highlighting where the lived experiences are going to layer onto what we can see quantitatively over time in relation to the regulatory environment and make sure that those who are most impacted in the system,
really Students. Right, Students and their caregivers and the families, that they are not symbolically placed within policy of like parent voice matters or perspectives or community perspectives, but that their experiences, their lived realities, their engagement with idea at the local level is actually brought then into the current policy and monitoring framework. Because we can talk about students, we can create methodologies to capture districts that are,
you know, meeting a threshold or not. But behind all of those numbers is that experience is the lived experience in districts. And so I think like, the most important focus is to continue to do the work so that we can assure that we are getting every layer of the policy ecosystem represented in our data to again provide those recommendations based on empirical findings. To improve what a system that is necessary but can has room for improvement. Well, that takes us
to the next question. What's your advice for states and districts to address disproportionality? So I appreciate that question because one of the core things that we also do with our project is really think about engaging with the states and districts we're working with and sharing findings all the time, like as much as we. That's emerging because the problem is acute
and it's necessary to be addressed now. So how do we bring this systems lens to make an actionable, you know, help with actionable plans? Like we've worked where we've brought emerging findings and layered it onto district root cause reports and said, hey, like, how do we make sense of what we see empirically and what you wrote in a root cause
report to address disproportionality and make change? So I think that one recommendation that is very tightly coupled with the project I'm talking about is to make sure that, you know, there's a critical bridge between research and practice and relationships to share research with practice. And again, that highlights the importance of technical assistance, because technical assistance allows for the translation of research to practice,
oftentimes with policy in a systems lens. And I think that it's also really important right now for states to continue to enhance and support their state longitudinal data systems because, you know, if monitoring is shifting at the federal level, states have the capacity to monitor outcomes at the local
level. So if they can build out and continue to use state longitudinal data systems to analyze outcomes, and then I think one of the most important things in this work that comes out of the data, comes out of years of experience working here, is that you can't address disproportionality just within special education. It cannot rest a citation. A recognition of disproportionality through idea cannot just go to a special ed director. It has to be something that's embedded throughout the
entire system. And you know, oftentimes because this monitoring mechanism is situated within ida, it remains a special education issue when it should any kind of improvement plan around it. And what I've seen in the data come out very loudly is that when shifts do occur, it's because the entire district, the entire team is engaged in the work. But it just happens to be that idea asks for the capturing of racial and disability inequities at the same time. So that's so interesting.
Let me highlight some, some stuff that you say because I thought it was very important, the idea of sharing findings with stakeholders. I think that's fantastic. I think we don't probably in research, we don't do it enough and really do a loop feedback of what we're finding on a timely basis. No, wait like three, four years for the project to end, and then maybe the findings are more for researchers
than for policymaker. Right. The second thing that you say that really grabbed my attention is the issue of technical assistance centers because they play a pivotal role on addressing disproportionality or many other equity issues in the nation. They translate, they create resources, they provide supports, even like almost at consulting basis to address that. But we also know this year most of the technical assistance centers have been cut off their Family. Right. Most of them had been closed.
I know there's a lawsuit going on. So that's something that's been to consider because people doesn't know we're at technical assistance centers. I encourage our audience to listen. Our episode specifically about technical assistance centers we had a few months ago. But they're a key actor in this ecosystem, as you call it. And the last thing is like that. This always comes to my mind in my conversations. People think this proportionality
is a special ed issue when it's really not. Or maybe special ed is part of the problem, but it's not a solely special ed issue. Right. Students are not in special ed when they're being identified. They're student gen ed and they're their trajectory and histories and experiences are in the general education classroom as well. And if I'm correct, Katherine. Correct. If not, the states are allowed to use 15% of the IDEA funds to address disproportionality and use it for interventions within
the general education. Correct. So it gets a little complex in there because there's different for if it's special education or not. But generally, yes, states and districts are allowed to use comprehensive CCES funds in order to address those contributing factors that lead to disproportionality. And as I mentioned before, what I see in the data is that is a point where policy feels something that can be acted upon in a way that builds agency for practitioners
and is an important mechanism. And, you know, technical assistance comes in there. And I think the other thing that is interesting around technical assistance is again, there's this tight coupling between what the federal and the states understand around policy. When you come into districts and we think of rural districts versus urban versus suburban across different kinds of states, you know, the work and policy becomes diffuse
and professional development then comes in. And professional development can be a response to an acute need in a district, or it could be loosely tied to a contributing factor, disproportionality, something like that. But the power of technical assistance is really keeping this kind of, especially in relationship to the work that we're doing is really keeping this focus on what is
the policy saying is a problem. How do we then put resources toward that and then how do we maintain that systems lens that again, won't just have us siphon all of our resources to addressing something within special education, but across an entire educational ecosystem at the district level or state level. And that's a really important point that continuously
comes out in the data. And I imagine as we move along, we'll become Even louder because it's not a surprising finding per se, but it's very prevalent. Wow. We talked a little bit about advice for state and districts or disproportionality. What advice do you have actually for researchers who wants to study this? Yeah, no, there's so, I mean, there's a lot of research on disproportionality. There is a lot of heated debates around the issue. Now it's a controversial
issue. You get in this dinner table with people that are doing this work and it can be pretty heated. So what you've done, advice do you have for people in studies? Yeah. And so I'm going to just speak from the policy and the systems level lens because I think again, what brought us to this project we're at is pulling pieces together and saying, what do we know and what don't we know? And then how can we improve the policy and the regulatory environment? So I think researchers need to
embrace complexity because disproportionality is complex. It doesn't exist within one system. I think there's a need to resist singular narratives of why it does or does not exist. Because, you know, there is a long line of research that makes very clear the historical, legal, institutional context that have led to where we are today. It doesn't just pop up, you know, because there's a certain group of students that aren't, you know, meeting a certain metric. It's something
that has built up over time. I think again, and I mentioned it earlier, talking about the study is you have to make theory explicit in your work because there's an underlying understanding of disproportionality where a singular intervention cannot address a systemic issue. And I see that repeatedly in the work where the, again, where people feel agency engaging with policy to address disproportionality. It is when you have all the pieces moving together.
There is not one single part of empty, multi tiered systems of support or mtss. There's not one single reading program that cannot address a systemic issue. And so again, I think that really highlights how policy is both an object to study and it's a tool to change things. So I think there's something around that dual
role policy. And then two other things I just really want to add is I would really encourage people to be creative and methodologically inventive around this issue because again, it is historically situated, it is complex. There is no single solution. Research continuously shows there is no single solution to addressing this problem. If there is one, I would like to know, but I've Never seen it
in the work I've done or the work I've read. And I think part of being inventive goes back to those research to practice partnerships where when you're engaging with practitioners, they have a whole wealth of knowledge that I'll never have as a researcher. But I know when we come together we can build conversation.
And so having humility and purpose in collaboration can also surface questions and potential answers of how to address the issue that's rooted in practice and the people actually doing the work trying to address this problem. So it's not admiring the problem from 30,000ft above, but it's really about engaging and truly embracing the complexity and the. There's a creative nature that I think is necessary to do this work so that we
don't just keep repeating. Like I said before, we've known for decades, Lloyd Dunn we've known this problem exists. So what can we do that's different or try to do that's different to address it? And where I sit now and for my work, it's a systems level perspective to try to tie all the pieces together because to me that is a way to respond to some of the complexity behind the issue. Thank you so much for that response. You know, I'm going to finish with a question I do to all my interviewees,
which is a hopeful question. It's a question that I ask you about dreaming. What would you like to see in a special education in the next five years? You know, this question I think is a tough one to answer in some ways and then a very easy one in others. So I will kind of stay within the lane that I've been talking about in this conversation is one there absolutely needs to be a reauthorization of idea that's empirically informed and responsive to what we've learned since 2004.
That really is thinking about like, how can we improve the systems that we have and knowing what we know of what works for whom and where. I think that there needs again be a really a much stronger relationship between research and policy, but systems level policy for reauthorization of ida. And then I think that one thing that it kind of aligns with the technical assistance comment and then also with what we see in our data is to see
a lot. I know that there's infrastructure already across the country, but to continue to really push for collaboration and mutual learning across states and with each other and with practitioners and expand partnerships because there's so much knowledge on the ground that can be used to improve what currently exists. And so I'd love to see that become louder and part of a conversation of ida. And then again, just reiterating the same point is,
you know, focus on systems level learning. Like, what can we, how can we better think about early intervention or these, you know, things like MTSs, like, how could we understand that in a way that could better inform and actually shift the outcomes that we hope to see, which is more
equitable outcomes and streaming policy processes? But I think for me, it's really about empirically informed IDA reauthorization that is responsive to lived experiences and longitudinal understanding of what has worked and hasn't worked over time. Thank you, Katherine. You know, I must say, I don't know, I'm a little afraid and skeptical about having a reauthorization in the current political context. And you don't have to say anything about that. I'm saying it. But that gives
goosebumps. If Congress and Senate right now text, IODA wants to reauthorize it. I will be a little scared, but we'll leave it there. Thank you, Katherine, so much for being with us. And yeah, good luck with your project. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Thai Fair. I hope you learned from, from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to spread the word about the show. See you next time.